In short
David Lowery and Anne Hathaway discuss making A24’s film Weeping Bleeding Hearts (with Lowery as director, Hathaway as moderator/guest) and how the movie’s performances, dialogue, and choreography reveal Mother Mary’s emotional state—especially her inability to speak and reliance on dance.
Guests/backgrounds
David Lowery is a filmmaker known for deep collaboration and extensive pre-production line-by-line interrogation. Anne Hathaway is an actor and writerly collaborator who plays Sam and reflects on performance rhythm and trust.
Key claims
Podcast moderation feels unlike directing; clarity and “expressing something undeniable” guide the script; Mother Mary is “emotionally inarticulate,” so dance communicates what words can’t; implicit backstory is present from frame one; the audience must wait to fully understand her.
Notable examples
A Faroe Islands “vow of silence” draft; a silent-film-inspired approach; Kesha’s Gag Order and St. Vincent’s The Apocalypse Song as touchstones; the barn dance described in the locked April 2023 screenplay; Nick Cave’s Faith Hope and Carnage as a spiritual inquiry guide.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOPodcast Moderation Experience
0:45 to 1:40
Anne shares her thoughts on the challenges of moderating a podcast.
Collaboration on Set
1:40 to 5:00
Anne discusses the nuances of acting and collaboration with directors.
“of you that sometimes finds it difficult to find your words.”
Exploring Script Drafts
5:00 to 8:20
David delves into the evolution of the screenplay and its unique iterations.
“And sometimes that is, you know, how did they do things 100 years ago in silent films?”
Creative Problem Solving
8:20 to 11:10
Anne and David share stories about innovative solutions during filming.
“Like this is a wrong film choice to make.”
Audience Expectations and Character Depth
11:10 to 14:00
They discuss audience expectations and the complexity of Mother Mary's character.
“And, and so I guess, I guess what I'm getting at is I had such faith in your artistry and like your vision and that you were going to bring the whole thing home that I was able to take that leap.”
Collaboration and Energy on Set
14:00 to 15:10
David Lowery shares his unique approach to collaboration with actors on set.
“I like to be collaborating with them right up close, but I like the camera to also be very close.”
The Importance of Dialogue and Pre-Production
15:10 to 17:40
The discussion evolves into the significance of dialogue and the pre-production process in filmmaking.
“I have always been someone who I'm quick to discard dialogue.”
Music as a Rehearsal Tool
17:40 to 21:10
The role of music in the rehearsal process is highlighted, revealing personal connections to songs.
“And we also, I think, spent a lot of time just sitting around on that set listening to music, which was a huge part of the rehearsal process.”
Choreography and Character Expression
21:10 to 24:20
The importance of dance and choreography in expressing character depth is explored.
“How do you feel that compares to what Danny and I came up with?”
Spirituality and Artistic Inquiry
24:20 to 26:08
They discuss the influence of spirituality and a specific book on their creative process.
“Is there anything you want to say about that book?”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Anne Hathaway:Hi, I'm David Lowery.
0:01David Lowery:And I'm Anne Hathaway.
0:03Anne Hathaway:And this is the A24 podcast. And I've been doing a lot of podcasts lately and wondering what it's like to be in the moderator seat. And I realize now that I don't like it.
0:15David Lowery:Does it feel different than being a director?
0:17Anne Hathaway:I feel I can get away with just you've experienced this on set when I just unleash a slew of words that don't necessarily make sense but hopefully convey the emotion of what I'm trying to ask for. And I feel like I can't get away with that behind the microphone right now.
0:34David Lowery:Well, one of the things that I've experienced when I'm – I find that I'm in like my favorite kind of deep collaboration with the director is we kind of get to a place where you don't have to say anything. You just – I can feel when I'm acting how they feel about a take and then they'll come out from behind the monitor and just kind of give me a look and I like raise my hand or they'll come over and put their head against my head and I feel like I'm downloaded. and uh anyway all this is to say that doesn't work in a podcast it doesn't work in podcast you and i just touch heads for half an hour exactly and everyone's like well yeah it sounds like an experience but i but i felt that um i felt that that was kind of our our thing on this one i felt like you and michaela connected over the power of the words you both being writers and i felt that um you know given and we've talked about this given that mother mary is an emotionally inarticulate person, I actually found that it really hampered my ability to communicate while I was her.
1:39David Lowery:And I felt like it kind of, Mother Mary is an expression of the part of you that sometimes finds it difficult to find your words. So between the two of us, we had no choice but to trust the wavelength.
1:50Anne Hathaway:Completely. I require those wavelengths to help me through life. I wish I could speak the way Sam does in writing that part and then witnessing the The way Michaela played it, I was living a fantasy life in which I could say exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment.
2:06David Lowery:But you can write the things.
2:07Anne Hathaway:I can write it. And if I was able to type this podcast out, it would be far more eloquent.
2:16David Lowery:I would have a lot of fun typing a podcast out with you. It would be a different format.
2:20Anne Hathaway:Wouldn't that be neat to just sit here and just type and the text could play out? And again, we'd be channeling an interesting wavelength that would be, you know what is interesting? is I have been going back through old drafts of the script. I was looking for the very first one from 2019. I found when I started writing during COVID. And for some reason in this version, it was because I was going to the Faroe Islands for a different project. But I was like, what if Sam's house is in the Faroe Islands? I was very inspired by that landscape. But I don't know if it was because we were all wearing masks or it must have been.
2:54Anne Hathaway:But I decided that in this iteration of the screenplay, Sam's house had a vow of silence and no one was allowed to speak and she had custom index cards or custom stationery and the only communication was through the written word. And so it was all the same dialogue but it had to flow differently because it was all taking the time to write it.
3:19David Lowery:The film also would have been 19 hours long.
3:21Anne Hathaway:Oh, that's why I stopped that version. That version made it all the way up to the dance scene.
3:25David Lowery:I do love that version in my head. Yes. In my head. And I think I would like to see it in a museum.
3:31Anne Hathaway:It 100 % was a museum piece. See, and actually I have to say that just reminded me of something that I just treasure about you.
3:39David Lowery:And it came up earlier in a different conversation I was having with somebody else about one of the reasons why you're so much fun to work with is that you are so inspired by your surroundings. And you have a certain type of joy in inspiration. whereas you know in other experiences that i've been in people aren't really allowed to make suggestions um on this one you were just down to play you know and i i was uh somebody was talking about like they had an idea for a practical shot where they didn't want to walk and then five minutes later there was a there's an apple box with wheels on it yes and you just leaned into it and then i told the story about how we were you know trying we had this like elaborate rig for the red fabric and it just wasn't quite working and we thought we were going to have to you know use a computer and we worked out that there would be a ring attached to an undergarment a secret a hidden undergarment and that we would thread it through and it wound up working worked
4:34Anne Hathaway:perfectly it was there were so many and you but you went you went with it i just remember you had
4:39David Lowery:just such a like i'll give it a go yes and let's see where this leads us and you weren't you know bowed by the pressure of like the shooting schedule you were just so driven by this beautiful
4:53Anne Hathaway:honoring of the creative impulse i find you can't do this on every movie but this was a movie where i was always thinking any moment that we are in is the most important moment and we have to see it through to its fullest and if someone comes with an idea bolt of inspiration out of the blue we need to honor that when you think about it from a production side of you know you always pay for something you know like it's like okay if we do this now we're gonna have to figure it out tomorrow what we you know if we're if we're gonna spend two days on the scene whatever we were supposed to shoot tomorrow is going to have to change but that's okay we'll figure that out tomorrow that's a tomorrow problem right now we're exploring together and trying to find this ephemeral thing that we're after.
5:37Anne Hathaway:And sometimes that is, you know, how did they do things 100 years ago in silent films? And other times it's just trying to find the emotional voice of these moments that we are after, really trying to give those emotions the space they needed to really allow this movie in particular to manifest the way that it did was really important to me.
5:58David Lowery:I'm actually curious because now I'm trying to imagine the Faroe Islands version. And also I remember, I seem to remember at One Draft, Sam lived in a trailer and Mother Mary like broke in through a window.
6:10Anne Hathaway:It was Sam's house had burned down and she was living while it was being rebuilt. She was living in a trailer outside. And yes, Sam and Mother Mary climbed in through the window.
6:22David Lowery:So I was wondering about that because, you know, I've just spoken about how you're driven by this honoring of the creative spirit. You've written countless drafts of this from 2019 onward. do you ever stop and think I'm asking too much of the audience? Like, does that impact your North Star or your vision for the movie? Or is it just you? Is it, you know what, this isn't quite what I want to say.
6:50Anne Hathaway:It's me. Almost always it's me. It's how can I achieve clarity? How can I find, and I mean, it goes to the audience as well I'm thinking about how I would receive this movie if I were sitting in the dark, if I were not the one writing it, if I were an audience member. How would these things that I'm conceiving of arrive in my periphery? How would I take them in? How would I see it? And as roundabout as I may be in getting to the point, I always want to make sure that I'm clear and lucid. And that if someone is willing to see the answer right in front of them, that it is available to them. We are never trying to hide the ball with this film or with any of my films.
7:33We are always trying to express something.
7:38Anne Hathaway:Maybe succinctly isn't quite the word, but it's true in spirit. I don't think that's the word. In spirit. That hasn't been my experience of the word. No. No, it's not. No, no.
7:48David Lowery:But I love what you said about clarity keeps coming up. And I think to express something undeniable. Yeah. You know, and that's one of the things that scared me the most once I kind of charted my course for how I was going to play this character was I knew I was making a choice that not everybody would understand. And that was to play Mother Mary as so broken she didn't have any fight left in her. And I thought, I can't believe I'm – I know this is technically wrong. Like this is a wrong film choice to make. Like this is a two-hander. I've got to have more bounce, more fight, more spit, more vinegar, more all these things.
8:30David Lowery:But it felt like such a betrayal of where the character's actually at. And it was so, oh, it was so scary to trust that the audience was going to have to wait over an hour into the movie before they understood what was really going on with her and that what they have seen will actually drop to another level and it will be earned. but it was really hard believing that the audience would grace her, what they needed to grace her. And I just knew that I would be asking the audience to watch Mother Mary kind of just get annihilated by Sam for the first 45 minutes of the movie. And thank goodness for Michaela Cole who made it so entertaining.
9:10Anne Hathaway:It's entertaining.
9:11David Lowery:That it actually is a pleasure watching a pop star get humiliated like that.
9:16Anne Hathaway:I think I'm a big believer that in the idea that all of the implicit elements of the movie are there from frame one. And so even if the audience doesn't know the actual events that led to Mother Mary's state when we meet her, there is a sense of.
9:37Anne Hathaway:Well, there's, I think, a great deal of empathy for her because because we've seen we've seen where she came from. and we see where she is when she gets to Sam's house. And in the ellipsis between those two moments, we are invited to wonder what may have happened. And I, as an audience member, naturally approach that with great empathy. Like, how could this have happened? And I think that you were so, I loved, I remember watching you walk up the stairs in the barn the first time and realize, like I realized how that was going to play once we understood why what happened but also just seeing that by itself was heartbreaking just seeing this person that we again I'm projecting on set right now but like when I'm there watching that happen knowing that we'll have 20 minutes earlier seen you on stage an utter rock star I naturally gravitate towards yes questions but also a tremendous amount of just sorrow that she has found herself in this place.
10:48Anne Hathaway:And curiosity comes second. Curiosity about what that actually was is secondary to the empathy.
10:53David Lowery:I think that what I'm connecting to is just the fear of not making the easy choice that
11:01Anne Hathaway:would have sort of let some of the tension for the audience and said, like, this is familiar.
11:07David Lowery:like yes you're watching um you're watching two people these two women engage in gamesmanship but that would have felt like a betrayal of the screenplay to me because you didn't write a game mother mary's not playing a game she's fighting for her life and she's past the point of of mounting any kind of defense or offense she's just kind of like she's just so storm-tossed you know? And, and so I guess, I guess what I'm getting at is I had such faith in your artistry and like your vision and that you were going to bring the whole thing home that I was able to take that leap. That felt very scary for me to, to not, like I said, to not make the choice that I know would have put a lot of people or right.
11:53David Lowery:I imagine a lot of audience members at ease. We weren't making like a series of like little moments. We were making a whole film.
11:59Anne Hathaway:Yeah. I remember writing the screenplay and realizing I could in the film at a certain point, and that would yield a movie that would be very enjoyable in which we could engage in that rat-a-tat-tat banter that the potential is there for that. but I wanted to push further and I wanted the movie to dig deeper and as a result the potential for that is it's always there but that's not what the movie's about and the great joy of this movie was that we knew that we were heading towards something deeper and every time that it felt like it might veer in that direction we could enjoy it when it did there's some moments in the movie where I just in just utter heaven watching you and Michaela go back and forth when the rhythm picks up.
Read the full transcript
12:48Anne Hathaway:But that's not this movie. That's not, it's inclusive of that, but it's going so much further than that. And it was, I remember the moment very clearly when I was writing it and just thinking like, I'm writing what could be the ending of the movie right now. And it, I don't want to spoil it for people who haven't seen it, but Michaela sort of turned, I turned that into a monologue that Michaela gives and, and realizing this is not the ending. This is the midpoint.
13:15David Lowery:I have a question because I've spoken to you about how I've felt transformed by this experience as a person, as a performer, as a collaborator and an artist. I'm sure you find yourself transformed by all the films that you make. And so I'm curious how precisely has Mother Mary transformed you?
13:36Anne Hathaway:I think I might be able to give a better answer to that after I've made one more movie and seen the ways in which it's manifested. But it's made me much more considerate.
13:48David Lowery:Really? Yeah.
13:50Anne Hathaway:I think that, I mean, I've always been, I've liked to think of myself as an empathetic director.
13:58David Lowery:Yes, you're a Texas gentleman. And, and, and yet I, I think there's a point.
14:09Anne Hathaway:Well, let me think of how to say this. I've always hidden behind the camera. I like to be close to my cast. I like to be collaborating with them right up close, but I like the camera to also be very close. So we're usually all together and I'm, my comfort zone is behind the camera and I love picking out lenses. I love designing shots. I love blocking choreography. And with this movie, I wanted to share in the experience that you and Michaela were having and participate in that and learn from that. And I don't know what it was like from your perspective, but I always felt like whether it was a literal circle on the floor or a metaphorical one that we were still cocooned within I always felt like I was participating in that exchange of energy on set and feeling it and understanding your process both of your processes in a way that I've never have on any other film before and that opened my eyes to I mean it sounds almost silly to say this this many films in but it opened my eyes to what it means to act and I really believe I will carry that forward on every movie I make and the process with which I engage with a cast and with our collaboration on the text will be incredibly transformed from the experience
15:37David Lowery:we had together on this film.
15:38Anne Hathaway:I have always been someone who I'm quick to discard dialogue. And going into this movie, I wanted to put a priority on the dialogue. It was written to be, you know, there's a lot of dialogue in it.
15:53David Lowery:Is there?
15:54Anne Hathaway:You know, a decent amount. And so I knew I was going to be respecting the text more than I have in previous films from the get-go. I always think about pre-production as the time where you embed within yourself all of the answers that you're going to need while you're shooting the movie.
16:13David Lowery:Yes, completely. Totally.
16:14Anne Hathaway:You just ingrain them all in yourself and you won't remember them, but when you get to set, you will know what to do. Totally.
16:20David Lowery:One of the things that I try to explain to directors who don't know me is that I interrogate everything in prep, like everything, even lines that I absolutely love. I just ask every single question. I hold everything up to the light. I poke holes in everything. And I think I know for a fact it's freaked some of them out. I've had to say to them, I do this because I'm not going to ask a single question when we're on set. Like when we're on set, I want to be your first lieutenant. I want to execute your vision. I just want to hit the ground running and know exactly what we're doing and why. We don't have time for my questions then.
16:53David Lowery:So yeah, so I agree with you about like finding the answers in pre-production.
16:57Anne Hathaway:It was, I remember that as well. I remember like we went, even though we knew we weren't changing anything, we went through and talked about every single line. We had those incredible.
17:05David Lowery:Some lines more than once. Yes, exactly.
17:07Anne Hathaway:We had some, we did that classic thing that you read about that I've never had the luxury of doing before, which is you tape out the set in an empty room and you have some stand-in props. And we weren't in the actual space, but we were in a strange photocopy of it. And we were able to just investigate.
17:26David Lowery:Right. We were on that huge soundstage.
17:28Anne Hathaway:Yeah. Yeah. Which is where we ultimately shot a lot of the scenes from the movie that took place on a stage. But at that point, it was completely empty. And we had a couple of tables, a couple of mannequins, but we were just beginning to see the movie come to life in terms of how we might block it. And we also, I think, spent a lot of time just sitting around on that set listening to music, which was a huge part of the rehearsal process.
17:52David Lowery:I don't know about Michaela. I had a song that became my Touchstone song in this one. Did you?
17:58Anne Hathaway:I had, like, my Touchstone record, which was—it came out while we were in prep, and I just listened to it nonstop, which was Kesha's Gag Order, which was great. She produced it with Rick Rubin, and I was reading Rick Rubin's book on creativity at the same time, and that record really captured the spirit of that summer, of that experience for me.
18:25David Lowery:Beautiful. My go-to song was The Apocalypse Song by St. Vincent.
18:30Anne Hathaway:Oh, yes.
18:31David Lowery:I just, that song will forever be fused with the barn for me. And it became, I don't know, it just became this, I learned it so well that I felt like I could see it dimensionally, like I could see the topography of it. And there's certain, you know, chord changes in it that every time I think about it, like it would lift me up and drop me off someplace else and it wound up becoming like my dance partner, the unseen dance partner in so many of the scenes. Speaking of dance partners, do you want to read the descriptor of the dance?
19:04Anne Hathaway:Yeah, I really, I've been, I mentioned that I was going back through old drafts of the script, but those were all the old, old ones. And I was, we've been talking so much about, about the performances and in particular the choreography in the barn. And I was just curious what, how it was described in the screenplay that we locked in late April of 2023.
19:26David Lowery:Yes.
19:28Anne Hathaway:And so I've got it right here, and I will just narrate it.
19:35Sam says, because I don't want to break my streak.
19:39Anne Hathaway:Mother Mary says, of what? Sam says, of not listening to your music. Mother Mary pauses, thinking about how much she's going to let that sting, how much she's going to take the bait. And then, without a word, she closes her eyes, collects herself. she finds her starting position and she begins to dance. Her bare feet clap, then pound against the wooden floor as she goes through her paces. She kicks up dust from the floor. It shimmers in the air, giving volume to the light around her. Without any music, the dance seems like work. The effort to move the way she's moving, to lift off from the floor, to achieve that state of grace she's reaching for.
20:18Anne Hathaway:But she does achieve it. Those thundering footsteps, the heavy breaths, they transform her. Sam watches, at first bemused, then something else, transfixed. Mother Mary leaps up, but then she lands too hard, stumbling. Her knee goes in a weird direction. Looks like it's about to snap. She cries out in pain. Sam rises and said, well, that's, but Mother Mary holds up her hand. I'm not done yet. She catches her breath, pops her knee back into place, and then rises and continues marking the choreography, slicing through the air like a knife one moment and a hammer the next, her skill and precision pulling the music out of the silence.
20:57Anne Hathaway:She leaves the stage behind, advancing through the space, circling Sam as the performance builds to a peak. And then she's finished. That's it.
21:11David Lowery:How do you feel that compares to what Danny and I came up with?
21:14Anne Hathaway:I think that covers the first third of what you and Danny came up with. and I love that I love that we took what was on the page and used that as a jumping off point and it's so it's so fun to go back and look at that and realize yeah yes that is a description of the scene in so many words of what happens but the spirit that comes through that is hinted at in that text, you and Danny really took that and ran with it. And I don't know. I mean, we read the script and knew that that was going to be a centerpiece, but anyone else, I don't know if it would read that way. And yet when you watch the movie, that is the heart of the film.
22:00David Lowery:I think this film has many hearts. I feel like that to play a character that struggles with words, that dance became so important to hinting at what was going on inside of her. and one of the lines that you wrote um which is now in the the screen now in the final film as i can't eat i can't heal and i just remember thinking somebody who's been kind of tortured by this feeling for years and is so decimated um who really can't in a way trust her own mouth. Like there's this, she can't trust the words that come out of it. She's afraid to speak. She's afraid of lying. She's afraid of what the truth might be.
22:51David Lowery:She's just, it's so bottled up. The only release she has is this dance and dance was her first love. But now even, but the spirit that's come to claim her is also claiming that and that it's this thing inside of her that takes over. And that became so much of the thrust of what Danny and I were working on was how Mother Mary can't. And that's part of the reason I think why everybody's afraid of her singing her song and exposing her truth because it goes to this primal, ugly, brutal place that nobody associates
23:21Anne Hathaway:her with, that she knows she can't do, that it's not allowed, that it would frighten people. It's dangerous.
23:28David Lowery:Yeah. And it's not her. And people would reject it and she would alarm people. And since that she's kind of crafted her identity as a safe space for so many people that would be a violation and she can't bear that thought um so in a way sam's the first person who sees the dance and isn't frightened by it um and it was it was amazing getting to create it with danny all of those weeks and months in the in the dance studio to learn all of those movements to kind of first build an iconography and then tear it apart yeah it's really and it was truly
24:08Anne Hathaway:i always thought of it as like watching the two of you build a vocabulary and when you think about in those terms this is a movie especially in that first half where sam gets a lot of monologues
24:19David Lowery:but that's mother mary's monologue yeah yeah and then and then mother mary finally does get a monologue at the end and you realize that she is an absolutely bereft soul and that's what you're watching and she's like i said she's she's not there to play games she's not there to have fun there's no subterfuge no she's she she she the only thing she has is her is her weeping bleeding
24:45Anne Hathaway:heart i love weeping bleeding hearts they make me feel they make me feel seen one last thing i have
24:55David Lowery:to say because we are wrapping up um i just have to give a shout out to the nick cave book faith Hope and Carnage, which became kind of a touchstone text for all of us on this film and informed, I know it informed you. Is there anything you want to say about that book? That book has brought, I'm not a particularly religious person, but it has brought
25:19Anne Hathaway:spirituality back into my life. And I don't want to define that. I don't want to put a name to it, But it did introduce me or reintroduce me to a concept that there is more to our universe than what we behold. And it's something that I've read and reread. But it certainly played a huge part in the digging deeper that this movie required of all of us. When I was writing the script and reading that book, there was an inquiry at the core of that conversation that Nick Cave is having. And I wanted this movie to be possessive of that same spirit of inquiry. And it's one that I will, that I'm carrying with me as we, as we walk out of the studio.
26:08Anne Hathaway:It's something that I, I, I will never shake.
26:11David Lowery:So I guess, uh, I guess ending by thanking Nick Cave is a pretty good way to.
26:15Anne Hathaway:It's a great way to go.
26:16David Lowery:Great way to leave the studio.
From the publisher
Topics covered include: Deep collaboration, early drafts of Mother Mary, being quick to discard dialogue, finding inspiration in the Faroe Islands, Anne's fear of making the easy choice, the qualities of being a Texas gentleman, the touchstone records that the cast listened to on set from Ke$ha to St. Vincent, Anne’s intensive pre-production process, David offering a special live reading from the Mother Mary script, dance as a monologue, feeling truly transformed as a person after completing the film, bleeding hearts, and praise for Nick Cave.